This Valentine’s Day tell your man how you truly feel — tell him with chocolate-covered KFC

Looking for a way to revolutionize the stale traditions of Japanese Valentine’s Day, Mr. Sato believes he has found the ultimate gift.

In Japan, Valentine’s Day is a time when women are expected to give the significant men in their lives gifts of chocolate. In the case of extra-special men, this involves whipping up some homemade chocolates, but as you can imagine, this can be a time-consuming chore. Another option would be some high-end chocolates from a fancy pâtissier, but such quality would be lost on most guys who are at this moment probably googling “pâtissier.”

This is why our reporter Mr. Sato has looked for something that is both easy for women to make, and satisfying for the men to eat. That something is Kentucky Fried Chicken coated in chocolate or as it’s creator calls it: “Choco-Kenta.”

By design, Choco-Kenta is extremely easy to make since KFC does most of the hard work for you. Just get a few pieces of the Colonel’s Original Recipe and some chocolate bars. The brand of chocolate shouldn’t matter, but we can’t guarantee the results with any other kind of fried chicken.

First crush the chocolate bars in a metal bowl. The finer you make the pieces, the easier and smoother it will melt.

Then melt the chocolate by placing the bowl into a larger bowl of hot water. It is possible to melt the chocolate in a microwave. However, for novices like Mr. Sato it can be difficult to do without burning it.

Once the chocolate has melted, evenly paint it onto the chicken. A rubber spatula is good to get into all the nooks and crannies of the chicken. When you’re finished, let it sit so that the chocolate hardens, otherwise it’ll be quite messy for the eater, and one should be able to retain their civility while eating chocolate covered fried chicken.

At this point you, like Mr. Sato, might get the bright idea to put the Choco-Kenta in the fridge so that it hardens more quickly. That, however, would be a terrible mistake.

Mr. Sato put his Choco-Kenta in for about an hour and when he took it out the chocolate and congealing grease from the chicken had merged and hardened even more than expected. In fact, it fused itself to the plate that it was sitting on causing Mr. Sato to almost blow a rotator cuff just trying to pick it up.

In the end it was all worth it though. After taking the first bite Mr. Sato found his Valentine in Choco-Kenta. He was skeptical at first thinking the bold sweetness of the chocolate would conflict with the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices causing the two to drown each other out.

However, the two flavors had embraced each other like a pair of long-separated lovers meeting on a foggy train station platform at dusk.

On the other hand, the hardness wasn’t optimum and simply eating it probably took a few hours off his lifespan. But overall it was still an above average dining experience. Mr. Sato also gave it to his fellow writers, all of whom agreed that “it wasn’t bad.”

So if you’re in Japan struggling with a new, exciting, or just plain easy way to give some chocolate to the man in your life, look no further because Choco-Kenta is all that and a bag of chips…provided you ordered a combo.